Learning how to listen and act with empathy is radically different from assuming traditional roles of teachers as experts, John M. Holland writes.

Teacher Adrianne G. Williams cultivates an environment where she focuses on students' interpersonal qualities as well as their academic ones. The students see her effort, she says, and the parents follow.

Let's make engaging students and families beyond our classrooms a part of every lesson plan, Megan M. Allen writes.

Children learn what they live, particularly when it comes to loving or fearing mathematics, a new study finds.

'Food deserts' have long been a concern. But what happens when poor young children have little access to "food for the mind"?

When teachers open up their classrooms and their teaching to parents, they build mutual trust and respect and avoid the nasty business of conflict, Eoin Lenihan writes.

A study by RTI International and Johns Hopkins University found evidence that teachers' assumptions and biases about their students' families can change after visiting their homes.

Though much of the parent involvement research focuses on mothers, emerging studies show involved fathers can significantly improve their children's educational progress, too.

Partnering with parents can help students of any age who have trouble with social or mental health issues. But the devil is in the details, finds an analysis of more than 100 studies.

Two new international studies look at how parents judge how to invest in their children's education, and what happens to children's academic progress when one parent can't be involved.

A new study finds one intervention cut early absenteeism by 15 percent by correcting common parent misconceptions about attendance.

A first look at new federal data on parent involvement suggests a disconnect between parents' expectations and school outcomes.

Students whose teachers viewed their parents as less engaged in their schooling had lower grade point averages and were less likely to be recommended for advanced courses, according to a new study.

News.

Preschool-age children who frequently play number-related games at home show better math skills and growth by the end of kindergarten, finds a new study in the journal Child Development.

While most parents of K-12 students seem pleased with the communication and educational activities schools are providing during the COVID-19 shutdowns, some are still concerned about how prepared their children will be for the next school year, a University of Southern California survey finds.

Review of: Modelling Transitions: Virtues, Vices, Visions of the Future by Moallemi, Enayat A. and de Haan, Fjalar J. (Eds.), reviewed by Cesar Garcia-Diaz

Review of: Multi-Agent-Based Simulation XIX. 19th International Workshop, MABS 2018, Stockholm, Sweden, July 14, 2018, Revised Selected Papers by Davidsson, Paul, Verhagen, Harko (Eds.), reviewed by Patrycja Antosz

Review of: Inventing Future Cities by Michael Batty, reviewed by Andreas Koch

Review of: How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions by Centola, Damon, reviewed by Srebrenka Letina

J Jumadi, Nick Malleson, Steve Carver and Duncan Quincey: Managing disasters caused by natural events, especially volcanic crises, requires a range of approaches, including risk modelling and analysis. Risk modelling is commonly conducted at the community/regional scale using GIS. However, people and objects move in response to a crisis, so static approaches cannot capture the dynamics of the risk properly, as they do not accommodate objects’ movements within time and space. The emergence of Agent-Based Modelling makes it possible to model the risk at an individual level as it evolves over space and time. We propose a new approach of Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Model of Risk (STDMR) by integrating multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) within a georeferenced agent-based model, using Mt. Merapi, Indonesia, as a case study. The model makes it possible to simulate the spatio-temporal dynamics of those at risk during a volcanic crisis. Importantly, individual vulnerability is heterogeneous and depends on the characteristics of the individuals concerned. The risk for the individuals is dynamic and changes along with the hazard and their location. The model is able to highlight a small number of high-risk spatio-temporal positions where, due to the behaviour of individuals who are evacuating the volcano and the dynamics of the hazard itself, the overall risk in those times and places is extremely high. These outcomes are extremely relevant for the stakeholders, and the work of coupling an ABM, MCE, and dynamic volcanic hazard is both novel and contextually relevant.

Victorien Barbet, Juliette Rouchier, Noé Guiraud and Vincent Laperrière: We present a model showing the evolution of an organization of agents who discuss democratically about good practices. This model feeds on a field study we did for about twelve years in France where we followed NPOs, called AMAP, and observed their construction through time at the regional and national level. Most of the hypothesis we make are here either based on the literature on opinion diffusion or on the results of our field study. By defining dynamics where agents influence each other, make collective decision at the group level, and decide to stay in or leave their respective groups, we analyse the effect of different forms of vertical communication that is meant to spread good practices within the organization. Our main indicators of the good functioning of the democratic dynamics are stability and representativeness. We show that if communication about norms is well designed, it has a positive impact on both stability and representativeness. Interestingly the effect of communication increases with the number of dimensions discussed in the groups. Communication about norms is thus a valuable tool to use in groups that wish to improve their democratic practices without jeopardizing stability.

Qing Xu, Sylvie Huet, Eric Perret and Guillaume Deffuant: The drivers of conversion to organic farming, which is still a residual choice in agriculture, are poorly understood. Many scholars argue that farm characteristics can determine this choice but do not exclude the role of social dynamics. To study this issue, we developed an agent-based model in which agents' decisions to shift to organic farming are based on a comparison between satisfaction with the current situation and potential satisfaction with an alternative farming strategy. A farmer agent’s satisfaction is modelled using the Theory of Reasoned Action. This makes it necessary to compare an agent's productions over time with those of other agents to whom the former attributes considerable credibility (“important others”). Moreover, farmers make technical changes that affect their productions by imitating other credible farmers. While we first used this model to examine simple and abstract farm populations, here we also adapted it for use with data from an Agricultural Census concerning the farm characteristics of dairy farming in 27 French “cantons”. Based on domain expertise, data and previous research, we propose certain laws for modelling the impact of conversion on the farm production of milk and the environment. The simulations with “real” populations of farms confirm the important impact of farm characteristics. However, our results also suggest a complex impact of social dynamics that can favour or impede the diffusion of organic farming through dynamic implicit networks of similarity and credibility. We confirm the great importance of demographic changes in farm characteristics.

Alireza Mansouri and Fattaneh Taghiyareh: Human interactions and opinion exchanges lead to social opinion dynamics, which is well described by opinion formation models. In these models, a random parameter is usually considered as the system noise, indicating the individual's inexplicable opinion changes. This noise could be an indicator of any other influential factors, such as public media, affects, and emotions. We study phase transitions, changes from one social phase to another, for various noise levels in a discrete opinion formation model based on the social impact theory with a scale-free random network as its interaction network topology. We also generate another similar model using the concept of social power based on the agents' node degrees in the interaction network as an estimation for their persuasiveness and supportiveness strengths and compare both models from phase transition viewpoint. We show by agent-based simulation and analytical considerations how opinion phases, including majority and non-majority, are formed in terms of the initial population of agents in opinion groups and noise levels. Two factors affect the system phase in equilibrium when the noise level increases: breaking up more segregated groups and dominance of stochastic behavior of the agents on their deterministic behavior. In the high enough noise levels, the system reaches a non-majority phase in equilibrium, regardless of the initial combination of opinion groups. In relatively low noise levels, the original model and the model whose agents' strengths are proportional to their centrality have different behaviors. The presence of a few high-connected influential leaders in the latter model consequences a different behavior in reaching equilibrium phase and different thresholds of noise levels for phase transitions.

Bruno Pietzsch, Sebastian Fiedler, Kai G. Mertens, Markus Richter, Cédric Scherer, Kirana Widyastuti, Marie-Christin Wimmler, Liubov Zakharova and Uta Berger: The recent advancement of agent-based modeling is characterized by higher demands on the parameterization, evaluation and documentation of these computationally expensive models. Accordingly, there is also a growing request for "easy to go" applications just mimicking the input-output behavior of such models. Metamodels are being increasingly used for these tasks. In this paper, we provide an overview of common metamodel types and the purposes of their usage in an agent-based modeling context. To guide modelers in the selection and application of metamodels for their own needs, we further assessed their implementation effort and performance. We performed a literature research in January 2019 using four different databases. Five different terms paraphrasing metamodels (approximation, emulator, meta-model, metamodel and surrogate) were used to capture the whole range of relevant literature in all disciplines. All metamodel applications found were then categorized into specific metamodel types and rated by different junior and senior researches from varying disciplines (including forest sciences, landscape ecology, or economics) regarding the implementation effort and performance. Specifically, we captured the metamodel performance according to (i) the consideration of uncertainties, (ii) the suitability assessment provided by the authors for the particular purpose, and (iii) the number of valuation criteria provided for suitability assessment. We selected 40 distinct metamodel applications from studies published in peer-reviewed journals from 2005 to 2019. These were used for the sensitivity analysis, calibration and upscaling of agent-based models, as well to mimic their prediction for different scenarios. This review provides information about the most applicable metamodel types for each purpose and forms a first guidance for the implementation and validation of metamodels for agent-based models.

Katarzyna Growiec, Jakub Growiec and Bogumił Kamiński: We study the impact of endogenous creation and destruction of social ties in an artificial society on aggregate outcomes such as generalized trust, willingness to cooperate, social utility and economic performance. To this end we put forward a computational multi-agent model where agents of overlapping generations interact in a dynamically evolving social network. In the model, four distinct dimensions of individuals’ social capital: degree, centrality, heterophilous and homophilous interactions, determine their generalized trust and willingness to cooperate, altogether helping them achieve certain levels of social utility (i.e., utility from social contacts) and economic performance. We find that the stationary state of the simulated social network exhibits realistic small-world topology. We also observe that societies whose social networks are relatively frequently reconfigured, display relatively higher generalized trust, willingness to cooperate, and economic performance – at the cost of lower social utility. Similar outcomes are found for societies where social tie dissolution is relatively weakly linked to family closeness.

Szymon Talaga and Andrzej Nowak: Real-world social networks often exhibit high levels of clustering, positive degree assortativity, short average path lengths (small-world property) and right-skewed but rarely power law degree distributions. On the other hand homophily, defined as the propensity of similar agents to connect to each other, is one of the most fundamental social processes observed in many human and animal societies. In this paper we examine the extent to which homophily is sufficient to produce the typical structural properties of social networks. To do so, we conduct a simulation study based on the Social Distance Attachment (SDA) model, a particular kind of Random Geometric Graph (RGG), in which nodes are embedded in a social space and connection probabilities depend functionally on distances between nodes. We derive the form of the model from first principles based on existing analytical results and argue that the mathematical construction of RGGs corresponds directly to the homophily principle, so they provide a good model for it. We find that homophily, especially when combined with a random edge rewiring, is sufficient to reproduce many of the characteristic features of social networks. Additionally, we devise a hybrid model combining SDA with the configuration model that allows generating homophilic networks with arbitrary degree sequences and we use it to study interactions of homophily with processes imposing constraints on degree distributions. We show that the effects of homophily on clustering are robust with respect to distribution constraints, while degree assortativity can be highly dependent on the particular kind of enforced degree sequence.

Myong-Hun Chang and Joseph Harrington: The dynamics of social stigma are explored in the context of diffusion models. Our focus is on exploring the dynamic process through which the behavior of individuals and the interpersonal relationships among them influence the macro-social attitude towards the stigma. We find that a norm of tolerance is best promoted when the population comprises both those whose conduct is driven by compassion for the stigmatized and those whose focus is on conforming with others in their social networks. A second finding is that less insular social networks encourage de-stigmatization when most people are compassionate, but it is instead more insularity that promotes tolerance when society is dominated by conformity.

Volker Grimm, Steven F. Railsback, Christian E. Vincenot, Uta Berger, Cara Gallagher, Donald L. DeAngelis, Bruce Edmonds, Jiaqi Ge, Jarl Giske, Jürgen Groeneveld, Alice S.A. Johnston, Alexander Milles, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, J. Gareth Polhill, Viktoriia Radchuk, Marie-Sophie Rohwäder, Richard A. Stillman, Jan C. Thiele and Daniel Ayllón: The Overview, Design concepts and Details (ODD) protocol for describing Individual- and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) is now widely accepted and used to document such models in journal articles. As a standardized document for providing a consistent, logical and readable account of the structure and dynamics of ABMs, some research groups also find it useful as a workflow for model design. Even so, there are still limitations to ODD that obstruct its more widespread adoption. Such limitations are discussed and addressed in this paper: the limited availability of guidance on how to use ODD; the length of ODD documents; limitations of ODD for highly complex models; lack of sufficient details of many ODDs to enable reimplementation without access to the model code; and the lack of provision for sections in the document structure covering model design rationale, the model’s underlying narrative, and the means by which the model’s fitness for purpose is evaluated. We document the steps we have taken to provide better guidance on: structuring complex ODDs and an ODD summary for inclusion in a journal article (with full details in supplementary material; Table 1); using ODD to point readers to relevant sections of the model code; update the document structure to include sections on model rationale and evaluation. We also further advocate the need for standard descriptions of simulation experiments and argue that ODD can in principle be used for any type of simulation model. Thereby ODD would provide a lingua franca for simulation modelling.

Flaminio Squazzoni, J. Gareth Polhill, Bruce Edmonds, Petra Ahrweiler, Patrycja Antosz, Geeske Scholz, Émile Chappin, Melania Borit, Harko Verhagen, Francesca Giardini and Nigel Gilbert: The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a dramatic loss of lives worldwide, challenging the sustainability of our health care systems, threatening economic meltdown, and putting pressure on the mental health of individuals (due to social distancing and lock-down measures). The pandemic is also posing severe challenges to the scientific community, with scholars under pressure to respond to policymakers’ demands for advice despite the absence of adequate, trusted data. Understanding the pandemic requires fine-grained data representing specific local conditions and the social reactions of individuals. While experts have built simulation models to estimate disease trajectories that may be enough to guide decision-makers to formulate policy measures to limit the epidemic, they do not cover the full behavioural and social complexity of societies under pandemic crisis. Modelling that has such a large potential impact upon people’s lives is a great responsibility. This paper calls on the scientific community to improve the transparency, access, and rigour of their models. It also calls on stakeholders to improve the rapidity with which data from trusted sources are released to the community (in a fully responsible manner). Responding to the pandemic is a stress test of our collaborative capacity and the social/economic value of research.

SAS supports direct integration for Git from Base SAS (via functions), SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Studio, and SAS Data Integration Studio. Read this article to learn how to use Git more effectively in your SAS processes.

The post Using built-in Git operations in SAS appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

Regular expressions are a powerful method for finding specific patterns in text. The syntax of regular expressions is intimidating, but once you've solved a few pattern-recognition problems with regex, you'll never go back to your old methods.

The post Convert a text-based measurement to a number in SAS appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

This blog post could be subtitled "To Catch a Thief" or maybe "Go ahead. Steal this blog. I dare you."* That's because I've used this technique several times to catch and report other web sites who lift the blog content from blogs.sas.com and present it as their own. Syndicating blog [...]

The post Read RSS feeds with SAS using XML or JSON appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

By using data provided by a Game of Thrones fan, we use SAS to look at screen time for scene locations and characters in this crazy popular show.

The post Deeper enjoyment of your favorite shows -- through data appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

How we built a recommendation engine for new topics on communities.sas.com. We used data, machine learning, and DevOps to build a scoring engine with SAS.

The post Building a recommendation engine with SAS appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

News outlets share stats and graphs that they source from public data. It takes data literacy skills to critique the stats you see, and investigate more.

The post A skeptic's guide to statistics in the media appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

If you use Microsoft Teams for collaboration, you should use it for operational messages too. You can use SAS to automate tailored notices to your Teams Channel.

The post How to publish to a Microsoft Teams channel using SAS appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

If you use SAS macro variables in your programs (who doesn't?), then the SAS Macro Variable viewer is immensely useful to see current macro var values.

The post Viewing SAS macro variables in SAS Enterprise Guide appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

I'm a big fan of the Import Data task in SAS Enterprise Guide, especially for its support of text-based files (CSV, tab delimited, fixed width, and more). There's no faster method for generating SAS code that reads your data exactly the way you need it. I use the tool so [...]

The post Tricks for importing text files in SAS Enterprise Guide appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

SAS Global Forum 2020 is not the conference experience we thought it would be. Thousands of us had planned to gather in person to share our enthusiasm and knowledge about SAS and power of data and analytics. We were going to combine our skills and knowledge to inspire one another [...]

The post How to share your SAS knowledge with your professional network appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

If you have been using SAS for long, you have probably noticed that there is generally more than one way to do anything. (For an example, see my co-author Lora Delwiche’s blog about PROC SQL.) The Little SAS Book has long covered reading and writing Microsoft Excel files with the [...]

Accessing Excel files using LIBNAME XLSX was published on SAS Users.

SAS' Leonid Batkhan shows you how to automate creation of SAS variable labels so tables and reports are easier to read.

Automating SAS variable labels creation was published on SAS Users.

As a long-time SAS 9 programmer, I typically accomplish my data preparation tasks through some combination of the DATA Step, Proc SQL, Proc Transpose and some housekeeping procs like Proc Contents and Proc Datasets. With the introduction of SAS Viya, SAS released a new scripting language called CASL – a [...]

Challenge accepted: Learning data prep in CASL was published on SAS Users.

COVID-19 is truly a global health issue affecting everyone and causing concern for you, our customers. As we all continue to navigate the uncertainty of this outbreak, SAS is committed to supporting your business as a valued partner and will ensure continuity of service. We created this guide to address [...]

Frequently asked questions related to COVID-19 and SAS customer support was published on SAS Users.

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of SAS content available on the web. Sometimes it gets difficult to navigate through everything to find what you need, especially if you are looking for complimentary resources. Training budgets can be limited or already used for the year, but you’re still interested [...]

Tips and resources for making the most of your SAS experience was published on SAS Users.

At SAS Press, we agree with the saying “The best things in life are free.” And one of the best things in life is knowledge. That’s why we offer free e-books to help you learn SAS or improve your skills. In this blog post, we will introduce you to one [...]

Free e-book: SAS Programming for R Users was published on SAS Users.

Martin Mincey of SAS Technical Support shows you how to debug when listing registered SAS fonts, registering new fonts, getting SAS SG procedures to use a new font and more.

How to debug 5 common SAS® software font issues was published on SAS Users.

Whether you like it or not, Microsoft Excel is still a big hit in the data analysis world. From small to big customers, we still see fit for daily routines such as filtering, generating plots, calculating items on ad-hoc analysis or even running statistical models. Whenever I talk to customers, [...]

Extending Excel with Python and SAS Viya was published on SAS Users.

As many of us are learning to navigate the changing world we are living in amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and as we care for our loved ones, friends, and our community, many of us now find ourselves working and studying from home much more than we did before. As an [...]

Working remotely? A list of 5 ways to spend your down time was published on SAS Users.

Common filters are filters that can be shared between objects in your reports. Common filter benefits include 1) Easy to assign the same filter conditions to other report objects, 2) When you edit a common filter, it is updated everywhere that the common filter is used, and 3) A common filter is available for the entire report, across pages.

Using common filters in SAS Visual Analytics was published on SAS Users.